The Alderson plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 13, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 76° in 1945.
Alderson’s center stands about 1,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 2,390 ft, a difference of 870 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Keeney Knob, about 3,930 ft, 5 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Greenbrier Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Alderson reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Greenbrier, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alderson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alderson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Alderson normally reaches 56° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1955; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.96 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Alderson, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
